It still startles today. But A Study in Scarlet, the novella in which Dr John Watson introduces himself and in which he introduces Sherlock Holmes, is just as good and has the merit of taking us to late nineteenth-century America, a land of pioneers and outlaws. This carefully crafted piece of fiction showed readers what they had seldom, if ever, seen before; his characters’ trek across the American continent and through the Rockies into Utah, shows them the Mormons, polygamy and the great temple in Salt Lake City. It also afforded Watson the opportunity to say that Holmes has ‘brought detection as near an exact science as it ever will be brought in this world.’

There is a good deal of passion in the stories and quite a lot of love. After all, Dr Watson falls in love and marries during the course of The Sign of Four. Several stories are concerned with the fate of young women fearful that they may be prevented from marrying the man of their choice or expected to marry a man they have not chosen. But there is no sex. Illicit sexual behaviour is heavily frowned upon and made the province of the villains of the stories and of women lost to all virtue and morality, for this is the 1880s and 90s. Only Irene Adler is permitted to get away with having been a man’s mistress, in her case no less a man than the King of Bohemia, and not only get away with it but, having made a happy marriage with someone else, be placed on a pedestal by Holmes. But she is the woman and in a category of her own.

Celibate Holmes may be but he has his vices. Much to Watson’s dismay, he is addicted to cocaine and is an occasional user of morphine. His disapproval of the opium den he visits in the course of investigating a case is, the reader feels, less due to revulsion at the drug itself than to the degradation it brings to the men who indulge in it. Modesty is not usually his strong suit. When told he should never neglect a chance, however small it may seem, he remarks that ‘To a great mind, nothing is little,’ yet on another occasion, when he has made an incorrect diagnosis of a crime, he bids Watson remind him of the case if ever he should seem to be ‘a little over-confident in my powers.’ Seldom showing much emotion, he nevertheless has tears in his eyes when Watson, his friend and faithful chronicler, lies wounded.

Holmes himself appears to die as a result of his celebrated encounter with Moriarty in The Final Problem and there is little doubt that Doyle intended his death to be the outcome of their duel at the Reichenbach Falls. Still, Holmes’s farewell letter is somewhat ambiguous and his body is never found. However much Doyle wanted to terminate his creation, he was finding that this was no easy task. Holmes was too popular to be easily got rid of and his author, while saying that he had had ‘an overdose of him,’ restored his detective to life, though backdating him in The Hound of the Baskervilles, and more positively and contemporaneously in The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

Some readers unkindly – and I think unjustly – said that though he returned he was never the same again. I am among those who cannot agree. The Adventure of the Norwood Builder and The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez are among the best in the collection and in His Last Bow he is still going strong. Watson tells us that he is alive and well. It is 1914, the First World War approaches and Holmes, laden with honours and universally acclaimed, places his ‘remarkable combination of intellectual and practical activity at the disposal of the government.’

We are delighted that he did so, for we welcome any excuse Doyle, in the guise of Watson, may make to present us with the further adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Ruth Rendell

CONTENTS

A STUDY IN SCARLET

Part 1 Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D., Late of the Army Medical Department.

1 Mr. Sherlock Holmes

2 The Science of Deduction

3 The Lauriston Garden Mystery

4 What John Rance Had to Tell

5 Our Advertisement Brings a Visitor

6 Tobias Gregson Shows What He Can Do

7 Light in the Darkness

Part 2 The Country of the Saints

1 On the Great Alkali Plain

2 The Flower of Utah

3 John Ferrier Talks with the Prophet

4 A Flight for Life

5 The Avenging Angels

6 A Continuation of the Reminiscences of John Watson, M.D.

7 The Conclusion

THE SIGN OF FOUR

1 The Science of Deduction

2 The Statement of the Case

3 In Quest of a Solution

4 The Story of the Bald-headed Man

5 The Tragedy of Pondicherry Lodge

6 Sherlock Holmes Gives a Demonstration

7 The Episode of the Barrel

8 The Baker Street Irregulars

9 A Break in the Chain

10 The End of the Islander

11 The Great Agra Treasure

12 The Strange Story of Jonathan Small

ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

A Scandal in Bohemia

The Red-headed League

A Case of Identity

The Boscombe Valley Mystery

The Five Orange Pips

The Man with the Twisted Lip

The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

The Adventure of the Speckled Band

The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb

The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor

The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet

The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

MEMOIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

Silver Blaze

The Yellow Face

The Stock-broker’s Clerk

The “Gloria Scott”

The Musgrave Ritual

The Reigate Puzzle

The Crooked Man

The Resident Patient

The Greek Interpreter

The Naval Treaty

The Final Problem

THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

The Adventure of the Empty House

The Adventure of the Norwood Builder

The Adventure of the Dancing Men

The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist

The Adventure of the Priory School

The Adventure of Black Peter

The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton

The Adventure of the Six Napoleons

The Adventure of the Three Students

The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez

The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter

The Adventure of the Abbey Grange

The Adventure of the Second Stain

THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES

1 Mr. Sherlock Holmes

2 The Curse of the Baskervilles

3 The Problem

4 Sir Henry Baskerville

5 Three Broken Threads

6 Baskerville Hall

7 The Stapletons of the Merripit House

8 First Report of Dr. Watson

9 Second Report of Dr. Watson

10 Extract from the Diary of Dr. Watson

11 The Man on the Tor

12 Death on the Moor

13 Fixing the Nets

14 The Hound of the Baskervilles

15 A Retrospection

THE VALLEY OF FEAR

Part 1 The Tragedy of Birlstone

1 The Warning

2 Sherlock Holmes Discourses

3 The Tragedy of Birlstone

4 Darkness

5 The People of the Drama

6 A Dawning Light

7 The Solution

Part 2 The Scowrers

1 The Man

2 The Bodymaster

3 Lodge 341, Vermissa

4 The Valley of Fear

5 The Darkest Hour

6 Danger

7 The Trapping of Birdy Edwards

Epilogue

HIS LAST BOW

The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge

1 The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles

2 The Tiger of San Pedro

The Adventure of the Cardboard Box

The Adventure of the Red Circle

The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans

The Adventure of the Dying Detective

The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax

The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot

His Last Bow

THE CASE BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

The Adventure of the Illustrious Client

The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier

The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone

The Adventure of the Three Gables

The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire

The Adventure of the Three Garridebs

The Problem of Thor Bridge

The Adventure of the Creeping Man

The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane

The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger

The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place

The Adventure of the Retired Colourman

A STUDY IN SCARLET

Part 1

BEING A REPRINT FROM THE REMINISCENCES OF JOHN H. WATSON, M.D., LATE OF THE ARMY MEDICAL DEPARTMENT

Chapter 1

MR. SHERLOCK HOLMES

IN THE YEAR 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the Army.